Interview with
David Reyne and Kim Watkins, 9am with David and Kim

KIM WATKINS: Now we know
‘difficult diplomatic dance’ because any man who
can get Condoleezza Rice to have coffee with him in Perth has
got to be a pretty good diplomat.

SMITH:
Well, not just with him but with his mum and dad and his wife
and his son.

REYNE: Oh, and
your son - the whole family.

WATKINS: How great is
that?

SMITH:
Well, she met our daughter at school because she went to our
daughter's school, which was a triumph as well.

WATKINS: Absolutely.

SMITH:
But, we turned up and had coffee. It was classic Australian
experience because I picked up mum and dad and we're driving
down to the coffee shop which is about three minutes drive from
where they live, it's - we've been living in the same suburb
for 40-odd years. And I am driving down and I say, "Got
any cash, dad?" And he says "Oh, yes," he
hands over $50. I use the $50 to pay for the coffees, pocketed
the change and spent the rest on the weekend, so...

[Laughter]

But the best bit was...

REYNE: What a
con.

WATKINS: Yes, I like
it.

SMITH:
The best bit was, I said to Hugo, "Look, Maddie will see..."

REYNE: Your
son...

SMITH:
... Hugo, my son, "Maddie will see the Secretary of State, you know,
at her school but your only chance will be coffee. Do you want
to come for coffee?" So, there's a bit of mumbling and
grumbling. Then on the morning he says, "Yes, I'll come." That
makes him late for school so Jane writes him out a late note
and anyway we're about to finish coffee and he leans over and
he says, "Madam Secretary, mum signed me a late night - a
late note because I'll be a bit late for school but no-one's
going to believe me, would you counter-sign it."

WATKINS: Oh, I love it.

SMITH:
So Condoleezza Rice counter signs the late note and I say to
him "Show don't give."

REYNE:
Yes.

WATKINS: I was about to say,
don't hand it over.

SMITH:
Yes, so he's got it.

REYNE: How -
that's - what a marvellous story.

WATKINS: That is so cool,
isn't it?

REYNE: How
significant is it?

SMITH:
It's particularly interesting because nine months into the job
and we know that the Howard Government had a very close
allegiance to the US...

WATKINS: Well, Alexander
Downer's told us about his close relationship with Condi...

REYNE: Yes,
and some people were wondering whether your government, the
Rudd Government would have the same kind of allegiance. It's
very significant that you managed to sit in a café in
Perth and have coffee with the Secretary of State.

SMITH:
Well, I asked her to come and visit Perth the first time I met
her to show off, you know, my home town. And in the end she
said she was happy to come but she wanted to do what she called
a home town visit. For example she invited David Miliband who's
the British Foreign Secretary to California and they'd done a
similar thing. So I wanted to show her off Perth, you know,
which I am very proud of and Perth is becoming one of the great
cities of the world.

WATKINS: Oh, Perth is a
beautiful city.

SMITH:
Absolutely, with lots of economic and social, intellectual
horsepower. So we showed her Perth as well. But it did reflect
the strength of the relationship between Australia and the
United States. And every election you have this will the
alliance continue with the change of government. And it
endures, Liberal, Labor, Democrat, Republican. The other reason
I wanted to take her to Perth because Perth is effectively the
home town of the alliance because we forged the alliance with
the United States...

WATKINS: That's right.

SMITH:
...in the darkest days of World War II with John Curtin and of
course he was a prime minister whose seat was in Fremantle.

WATKINS: It's very
significant.

REYNE: I am
keen to - I wonder what it's like, I mean, how important it is
for Foreign Ministers to make personal relationships.

SMITH:
Well, it's very important and you know I've been, sort of doing
a lot of travelling and seeing and meeting a lot of my
counterparts and so the second time you meet them the third
time you meet them, you do build up a personal rapport which
means that if there's a problem then you can get on the phone
and have a conversation. You can ring them, you don't have to
worry about doing the formal bilateral conversation...

WATKINS: Well, how
does...

SMITH:
…so it is important.

WATKINS: Well, I guess
further to that, how does it then change with the American
political landscape, of course we've got an election coming
up...

SMITH:
Well, go through the same sort of process. People will say, oh,
there's a change of administration. It might be, you know, the
McCain administration it might be an Obama administration, and
what impact will this have on the relationship between
Australia and United States. And after sort of a settling down
period where the President meets the Prime Minister, the
Secretary of Defence meets Joel Fitzgibbon and the new
Secretary of State meets me...

WATKINS: You all shake and
nod.

SMITH:
...[indistinct] it all settles down...

WATKINS: Yes.

SMITH:
..and life goes on. Because that alliance continues to be very
fundamental to our sort of, strategic and security and defence
arrangements.

WATKINS: Well, you mentioned
McCain and Obama of course. There is a late entry into the
political race, just have a look.

[Beginning of excerpt file footage]

HILTON: Hey,
America, I am Paris Hilton and I'm a celebrity, too. Only I'm
not from the olden days and I'm not promising change like that
other guy. I'm just hot. I am Paris Hilton and I approve this
message because I think it's totally hot.

[End of file footage]

WATKINS: [Laughs]

REYNE: So
would you be keen to take Paris to coffee?

SMITH:
There are some things you should never touch.

REYNE: It's a
further...

SMITH:
I went to Hanoi, and one of the things they got me to do was to
go to a restaurant which had some Australians contacts and to
stand in the hot kitchen and sweat and cook some noodles. So I
end up on Vietnamese TV with a silly hat. So first rule, never
get caught in silly hats...

WATKINS: It's starting.

SMITH:
..but the golden rule, never get caught going anywhere near
Paris Hilton.

REYNE: Just
further, the logical other question to ask, in this
conversation is that how difficult is it when you have to - you
don't strike a relationship, you don't strike a good
relationship. I am not suggesting that this is the case but
recently you were in Fiji and we saw the pictures and it looked
like difficult meetings when you were trying to get the issue
of democracy up and running in Fiji.

SMITH:
Obviously it doesn't help if you don't - if there's a bit of,
sort of, personal disharmony between a President and a Prime
Minister or a couple of Foreign Ministers doesn't help.

With Fiji it wasn't so much that, because I'd
never met Commodore Bainimarama before, I'd met the interim
Foreign Minister before. It's the tenseness of the very strong
differing views. We actually had quite professional and
civilised and pleasant conversations but they were strong views
firmly held in different directions. We want them to have an
election and return to democracy and respect human rights and
they're dragging their feet.

And I was there with my colleagues from Papua
New Guinea and Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand and we came to the
conclusion if the political will was here, if they wanted to
have an election, there's nothing stopping them. So they gave a
promise to have an election by the end of March and the Prime
Minister, Mr Rudd's going to the Pacific Island Forum in Niue
in a couple of weeks time and that will really bring that issue
to a head.

So sometimes you have a tenseness of a
disagreement and sometimes there's just, you know, the
scratchiness of not quite getting on.

WATKINS: Yes. Well, it's
great to see that we are making some inroads in the Pacific but
of course China is a completely different topic there. I mean,
we're talking about serious human rights abuses and breaches
and of course, an Olympic games is only highlighting those. But
Australia quite differently, and Mr Rudd, differently to Mr
Howard is very outspoken about his views.

SMITH:
Well we have a very strong view about protection of human
rights and every time we meet Chinese officials whether it's
the Prime Minister and he's meeting the Chinese Premier and
President today, or when I meet Foreign Minister Yang, we raise
human rights issues. I most recently saw Foreign Minister Yang
in Singapore for some ASEAN related meetings and I raised the
Dalai Lama, raised Tibet, raised human rights, which we always
do. I think it really crystallised when the Prime Minister went
to Beijing University and in Mandarin on home turf said we want
you to respect human rights, have a positive dialogue with the
Dalai Lama. So we've been very strong about it, both publicly
and privately.

SMITH:
Some people were saying, look, we should boycott the opening of
the Olympics, and the Prime Minister and I said, no, that's not
right.

China's engagement with the international
community through something like the Olympics is a terrific
thing, because it brings them out into the international
community more. Some people think that's an old-fashioned view,
but it does.

So you see earlier in the week, attempted
restrictions on the internet, but they have now been forced in
a sense to relax those because of the focus on the
Olympics.

REYNE: How do
you...

WATKINS: Relax; not
completely though.

SMITH:
No. No. Well, I mean, look, the reality is...

WATKINS: Small steps.

SMITH:
...China has made a lot of progress in this area and other
areas for the last 30 odd years, but, we continue to have very
serious concerns. There are very serious issues - Falun Gong,
Tibet, the Dalai Lama, the Muslim Uighurs Group - you know, and
not allowing sort of full freedom of expression or
association. And we continue to press China on these issues.

REYNE: How is
it done in a diplomatic sense? I mean, how do you...

WATKINS: Yes.

REYNE: ...how
do you actually approach the President, the Prime Minister, and
say, we have a problem with your human rights record...

WATKINS: And you know the
meeting's going to be tense from the start.

SMITH:
Well, with China, we have a, what we call formal bilaterals,
which is just I sit down with the Chinese Foreign Minister,
there are officials there, there are note takers and record
keepers; it's a formal meeting. He speaks in Chinese. I speak in, I speak in Australian. If
it's...

REYNE:
Perth-ese.

SMITH:
...Perth-ese. If it's our Prime Minister, he speaks in
Mandarin as well, so they don't need translators or
interpreters.

And so that's a formal process, and we always raise it.

But, you also do it informally. I had a formal
meeting with Foreign Minister Yung in Singapore with the ASEAN
meetings, but I saw him in Paris - which was a meeting about
Afghanistan, and what we call a donors conference; giving more
money to try and build Afghanistan's capacity to health,
education, to run their own affairs, in addition to their
difficult security situation. So we're lining up for the
photo queue, you know, for the big photo. So you turn up on the
podium and there's Australia here and China there. You find out
where your spot is and stand. And we were next to each
other.

We then had a conversation about me saying, I'm
going back to Perth, I'm going to see the Dalai Lama. I know
you don't like that, but, you know, we are going to see
him.

And, we had a conversation at the photo shoot
about opening up and having a constructive dialogue with the
Dalai Lama.

WATKINS: So you don't think
to yourself, oh, I won't bring that up, that'll cause a
stink?

SMITH:
I think, the phrase that China always uses in terms of
relationship is, it's important to have a relationship of
mutual trust and respect. I think that's right. If you don't
raise these difficult issues, then how can you really have, you
know, that relationship?

It's the same, for example, with Indonesia. We
have a first-class relationship with Indonesia. Very important
country, you know, next to us.

WATKINS: And tense at
times.

SMITH:
And sometimes there are difficult issues, but, Foreign Minister
Wirajuda, I'll be seeing him next week, I'm going to Jakarta on
Monday, Tuesday - he and I have the same attitude - if we have
a difficult issue, talk about it.

There's a good saying, which I got from the
Indonesian President. We went to Bali for the climate change
conference, and Kevin's having...

WATKINS: Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono.

SMITH:
Yes, President Yudhoyono and Prime Minister Rudd's having
a formal bilateral with him, and he says, he says, ‘Prime
Minister, Indonesia has a perfect relationship with Iceland. A
perfect relationship. We're so far away that we have nothing in
common, so therefore the relationship's perfect.’ The
closer you get, it's like families or neighbours, or
communities, you know, the closer you are, there will always be
issues.

WATKINS: Yes.

SMITH:
The question is making sure you deal with those issues in a way
that doesn't disturb the fundamental fabric of the
relationship.

REYNE: It's
interesting isn't it? It brings up the whole question of the
significance of the Asian Pacific region, and, there must be,
the world must see it as a growing significance now,
given...

SMITH:
Oh, absolutely.

REYNE:
...given India and China.

SMITH:
India. China. And also, the ASEAN countries - so, Singapore,
Indonesia, you know, Thailand, that group of countries - their
economy has significantly expanded in the last decade as
well.

The economic, political, strategic influence is
shifting to our region; shifting to the Asia Pacific, away from
Europe and the Atlantic, to our area, which is why we want to
be more active in the Asia Pacific, more engaged. It's very
very important to our future prosperity and to our security and
strategic arrangements.

REYNE: Because
there must be, there must also be many - I'm thinking
specifically about the smaller Pacific nations, who are
enormously disadvantaged...

SMITH:
Absolutely.

REYNE:
...because of their location.

SMITH:
Because...

REYNE: And
their dependence on...

SMITH:
Well, their location. They're a long way away, so they're
disproportionately adversely affected by fuel price increases
or food price increases.

And so, with the Pacific, our attitude is, we
want Australia to be a good international citizen. We're a significant, prosperous, developed
country. So we've got a responsibility, in our view, in our own
backyard in particular to give those countries who need a
helping hand a helping hand.

Which is why we've, we're developing a thing
called Pacific Partnerships for Development, where we enter
into a partnership with the Pacific island nations - whether
it's PNG, Samoa, Tonga - and we say, okay, how can we now help
you provide the sorts of benefits and services and prosperous
lifestyle that Australians get? How can we help with education,
with health?

So we're looking at, you know, education
programs, education, health programs, infrastructure, but also
building their capacity to run their own affairs. How can we
help their civil servants develop? How can we help their judges
etcetera?

WATKINS: So there's clearly
a lot of emphasis that the government is putting on itself in
terms of being a good international leader and a good member of
the community, because we're seeing...

SMITH:
Absolutely.

WATKINS: ...more money than
ever before...

SMITH:
Absolutely.

WATKINS: ...spent on
aid...

SMITH:
Absolutely. I mean, we spend a lot of money on overseas
development assistance.

We came to office with a, with a commitment to
increase it to 0.5 per cent of our Gross National...

WATKINS: Well we were
amongst the...

SMITH:
...Income.

WATKINS: ...lowest countries
in the world. I mean, individually...

SMITH:
Well I don't...

WATKINS: ...we're generous,
but as a country...

SMITH:
We, we...

WATKINS: ...we were
stingy.

SMITH:
I don't want to be politically pejorative, but over,
over...

WATKINS: Oh go on.

SMITH:
...over the preceding decade, we had slipped, you know, we can
do a lot better.

But, it's also important - we came to office...

REYNE: ...the
most decent way of putting I've ever heard.

SMITH:
...we had three, three sort of fundamental pillars to our
foreign policy approach. One is our alliance with the United
States. We've spoken about that.

Second is our engagement in the Asia Pacific.
And being a good international citizen and helping out in that
area is also important. But it also gives us street cred. If
we, if we are a good neighbour, a good partner, a good, you
know, regional player in our area, it gives us street cred when
we go to the United Nations and argue on other issues, which is
our third pillar, which is, engagement in the United Nations in
the multilateral forum.

Which we, and we think that, you know, the
previous government didn't pay enough attention to the Asia
Pacific, didn't pay enough attention to the United Nations and
the other what we call multilateral forums where we all get
together as nations.

That's important, because a lot of the problems
we have now, you can't address by yourself - food security,
climate change, transnational...

WATKINS: We need those
relationships don't we?

SMITH:
Exactly. Exactly.

REYNE: And
given our role, or the government's to expand its role in the
region, should we therefore have a seat on the UN Security
Council?

SMITH:
Well we, we say yes, and we've indicated we're going to
campaign for a position for 2013/14.

We haven't been on the Security Council since
1986. It's too long a gap, you know.

You've often heard this phrase, you know,
Australia punches above its weight. I hate it. You know,
because it's not true.

Yes, it's true that in population terms we're
about country number 50 - you know, 21 million people. But in
economic terms, in terms of prosperity, income per capita,
we're in the top 15. Size of our economy, top 15. Spending on
defence and peacekeeping, we're in the top dozen.

We're a significant and considerable nation,
and we've got great values and virtues; you know, attachment to
democracy, respect for human rights, the notion of, you know, a
helping hand, of a fair go. We should take those values and
virtues to the world in a proud, you know, and active way. And
that's what we want to do.

WATKINS: Yes. Look we, we
are just about out of time, but I just wanted to know before we
go, who you, who you find to be the greatest, or to have the
greatest intellect - George Bush or Paris Hilton?

[Laughter]

SMITH:
Well...

REYNE:
[Laughs] Careful now.

SMITH:
...you said, you said when we started I had to be, I had to be
a diplomat...

WATKINS: [Laughs].

SMITH:
...so, so I'll have to go for the President of the United
States. But, but also I do, I do...

WATKINS: [Laughs] that was
backhanded compliment though.

SMITH:
...I do warn everyone, there are certain things you shouldn't
touch.

[Laughter].

SMITH:
Paris one of them. But, just, I'll very quickly finish - you
know, Australians are great for sort of nicknames etcetera.

WATKINS: Yes.

SMITH:
My young bloke plays cricket. He's a serious cricket player.
And so he plays club and district. One of the guys who plays
for another club - he's under 16s, under 17s, his name is
Hilton, I won't give you his surname...

WATKINS: Yes.

SMITH:
...but his first name is Hilton. All the guys call him
Paris.

WATKINS: Of course. Of
course.

SMITH:
You know. So, when, you know, when Paris goes out to bat, they
say, Paris is going out to bat, you know. So it's a
classic.

REYNE: The
poor bloke.

WATKINS: The poor kid, I
know, he's got no chance has he?

SMITH:
Well, he's actually quite a good bat, so he has a bit of a
chance.